A 2006 report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) showed that more parents and guardians were using filtering, blocking, and monitoring software on the home computers that their children used most often, but even so, youth exposure to unwanted sexual material increased substantially from the report conducted five years earlier. In the study, thirty four percent of the youth communicated with people online that they did not know. One in seven received unwanted sexual solicitations or approaches in the past year, while fifty six percent of the youths who received an unwanted solicitation did not report the incident to anyone. Almost one third (approximately thirty one percent) of the solicitations were aggressive, meaning the solicitors made or attempted to contact the youth offline, and of the aggressive solicitations, thirty four percent called the youth on the telephone.
The report recommended broader efforts to reduce the risks to youth, but the recommendations were still directed mainly to limiting Internet access from within the home. However, approximately twenty five percent of all teens and pre-teens in the U.S. carry a cell phone and this number is expected to grow significantly over the next several years. All of the Internet services, such as email, instant messaging, text messaging, etc., mentioned in the NCMEC study, are also available on the child's cell phone. In addition, the child is more likely to assume his cell phone activities are private when away from the monitoring software installed on the home computer. Currently, there is no means for parents to monitor their child's Internet and cell phone activities outside of the home.
As a result there is a need for systems and methods that allow parents, guardians, and/or employers to effectively monitor these activities as well as provide additional security, location tracking, and/or prosecution, for example, against unlawful predator activities or other undesirable activities.